Return to the M.B.Herald Vol. 36, No. 6 Home Page
There in the Garden, Jesus prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will."
He returned, and found His most trusted disciples asleep. He woke them and scolded them and then went to pray again: "My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may Your will be done."
What was it that Jesus feared so much that he was "overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death" and begged God not to let Him go through it? What was this bitter cup that Jesus so feared?
We have a one-cup plunger pot at home which we use to make coffee. The purpose of a plunger pot is to force the coffee sediment to the bottom of the pot and to keep it there so that it doesn't get into the cup of coffee. If these dregs make it into the cup, the result is a bitter cup of coffee.
Jesus stared into the cup that God was offering Him and did not like what He saw. What was it about this bitter cup, what were the dregs that Jesus recognized there, that overwhelmed Him with sorrow to the point of death?
Throughout history, people have continued to dream up fiendish ways of torturing each other. Crucifixion is one of the most cruel. But Jesus' physical suffering began even before His crucifixion.
Public Flogging. Mark 15:15 says Pilate "had Jesus flogged". This was no ordinary strapping or caning. The Romans would strip their prisoner and stretch him over a low pillar so the back was exposed. Then a short whip was used from each side of the prisoner. The whips had multiple tails to which were attached pieces of lead or bone. The intent of these was to tear the skin as both whips were applied with maximum force. Victims who survived--and many died as a result of the flogging--had their skin torn from their backs, and deep bloody holes torn into their flesh from the whip ends.
Crucifixion. Roman crucifixion was intended to serve as a lesson to all those who might consider breaking Roman law or rebelling against the Roman government. The intent was that once you saw a crucifixion, you would be so horrified that you would not even think about breaking the law. To accomplish this, crucifixions were public, humiliating and incredibly cruel. The prisoner would be stripped naked and tied to the cross by his arms, legs and waist. Rough spikes would then be pounded through his hands and feet, the cross placed in the ground and the ropes removed. There the prisoner would hang, sometimes for as long as four days, and slowly die in the hot sun.
Jesus had heard about and probably seen these crucifixions. Was it this physical pain that Jesus saw as the dregs at the bottom of the bitter cup He was being asked to drink?
I don't think so. The Bible is remarkably restrained in its description of Jesus' physical suffering, almost seeing it as a side issue. Mark 15:15 states matter of factly that Pilate "had Jesus flogged", and Mark 15:24 adds, "And they crucified Him." That's it. There is nothing about how Jesus suffered physically. No cries of physical pain are recorded.
Jesus was offered wine spiked with myrrh before His crucifixion. The intent of this drink was to dull the pain; it acted as a mild narcotic. Jesus refused it. He was not afraid of the physical pain. He would die in control, with a clear mind.
The Soldiers (Mark 15:16-20). The only aspect of Jesus' sentence that the soldiers could understand was the fact that Jesus was accused of wanting to replace Caesar, their king and leader. Now they mocked Him for this, dressing Him in the traditional royal purple robe, making Him a crown of thorns, kneeling in mock obeisance before Him and hailing Him as "King of the Jews". To make their mockery and humiliation complete, they struck Him on the head so that the thorns would drive deeper into His skull, and they spat on Him.
The Common People (Mark 15:29-30). "Those who passed by hurled insults at Him, shaking their heads and saying, `So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, come down from the cross and save Yourself.' " How this taunt must have hurt Jesus. It was, after all, for the common people that Jesus was dying. They did not see this. Instead of quietly recognizing the pain that Jesus was enduring for them, they hurled insults at Him.
The Chief Priests and Teachers (Mark 15:31-32). You might have expected mockery from them. In fact, it was very much as a result of their pressure that Jesus was on the cross in the first place. "He saved others but He can't save Himself!" they said. "Let this Christ, this King of Israel, come down now from the cross, that we may see and believe." Can't you just hear the derision in their voices?
For three years, Jesus had performed miracles in their midst, healing the sick, making the lame walk again, even raising the dead. Yet the chief priests and teachers did not "see and believe". Would they have believed even if Jesus had stepped down from the cross? No, I think they would have found one more excuse not to see and believe.
The Two Robbers (Mark 15:32b). Even the men crucified with Jesus "heaped insults on Him". You would think they might have other things on their mind. Later, however, we read in Luke that one of the two thought better of his actions, rebuked the other man and asked Jesus to "remember me when You come into Your kingdom" (Luke 23:42).
How all of these taunts and insults must have hurt Jesus!
Peter's Denial. Then there was the hard reality of His best friend denying his relationship with Jesus. Peter, the disciple closest to Jesus, the man who only hours before had sworn that he would go to the cross with Jesus, denied that he even knew Him--not once, not twice, but three times!
Oh how it hurts when our closest friends betray us. Jesus knows how that feels.
But all of this emotional humiliation, painful as it was, was not what Jesus feared most. This was not yet the dregs at the bottom of the bitter cup which caused Him to be so "overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death" in the Garden of Gethsemane.
The answer is found in Mark 15:33-34: "At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, `Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?'--which means, `My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?' "
Here we have Jesus suffering the agony of abandonment by God. But in what sense was He being abandoned? Yes, He had been betrayed by Judas, one of His trusted disciples, He had been mocked and ridiculed by all those around Him, and he was suffering intense physical pain. But all of those things Jesus had foretold and accepted. There was something deeper in this abandonment. This was the dregs at the bottom of the bitter cup that He so wished to avoid.
You see, at the moment of His death on the cross, Jesus took on all the sin of the world. At that moment, because of our sin, God's wrath fell on Jesus. The harmony between God the Father and Jesus His Son was broken. Jesus was separated from God.
This is what Jesus so wished to avoid. This is what caused Him to plead with God in the Garden to take this bitter cup from Him. It was not pain and humiliation that Jesus feared most; it was separation from God, no matter how temporary that separation might be.
And Jesus did not die for us so that we will not suffer emotional humiliation. Many Christians have suffered emotional humiliation equally as cruel as that which Jesus suffered that day.
Instead, Jesus died for us so that we will not have to suffer separation from God because of our sins. On Good Friday, nearly 2000 years ago, Jesus accepted what would cause Him the deepest pain, the bitter cup of temporary separation from God, so that we would not have to suffer permanent separation from God.
We may not have a choice about whether or not we suffer physically. We may not have a choice about whether others hurt us emotionally. But we do have a choice about what Jesus considered the worst suffering of all, separation from God. Because Jesus drank the bitter cup, all of it, at His crucifixion, we have a choice. What will we choose: communion with God or the bitter cup of separation from God that Jesus so feared?
Hans Krueger is a member of Cedar Park MB Church in Delta, B.C. This article is based on a sermon he preached in that church on Good Friday, 1995.
Return to the M.B.Herald Vol. 36, No. 6 Home Page